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• Lucky Kid Gets Playable Angry Birds Cake [Video]

  - by ETC

  If you’re a six-year-old that loves Angry Birds we’re not sure you could get a better cake than a playable Angry Birds mock-up. It’s one thing to make a static Angry Birds cake, that takes a certain level of cake baking skill. It’s another thing altogether to make a cake that is a playable mock-up of the game, complete with slingshot and avian projectiles. It’s become a family tradition that I make increasingly ridiculous birthday cakes for my kids each year. So with my little boy Ben turning 6-years-old over the weekend, and appreciating his love of Angry Birds, I thought I’d have a shot a making him a playable Angry Birds birthday cake with working catapult and iced birds as ammunition. [...] It took 10 hours to make and 2 minutes to destroy. Angry Birds Cake [Electric Pig via Mashable] Latest Features How-To Geek ETC How To Make Hundreds of Complex Photo Edits in Seconds With Photoshop Actions How to Enable User-Specific Wireless Networks in Windows 7 How to Use Google Chrome as Your Default PDF Reader (the Easy Way) How To Remove People and Objects From Photographs In Photoshop Ask How-To Geek: How Can I Monitor My Bandwidth Usage? Internet Explorer 9 RC Now Available: Here’s the Most Interesting New Stuff Lucky Kid Gets Playable Angry Birds Cake [Video] See the Lord of the Rings Epic from the Perspective of Mordor [eBook] Smart Taskbar Is a Thumb Friendly Android Task Launcher Comix is an Awesome Comics Archive Viewer for Linux Get the MakeUseOf eBook Guide to Speeding Up Windows for Free Need Tech Support? Call the Star Wars Help Desk! [Video Classic]

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• Create a Lucky Desktop with our Saint Patrick’s Day Icons Three Pack

  - by Asian Angel

  Saint Patrick’s Day is almost here, so if you are wanting to add a nice touch of luck (and green) to your desktop then take a look at these three fun icon packs we have for you. Note: Available in .ico and .png format. Irish Icons [Icon Stick] Note: Available for Windows and Mac. St. Patty’s Kidcons [Iconfactory] Note: Available for Windows and Mac. St. Patrick’s Day Icons [Bry-Back Manor] These icons will make a nice addition to our Saint Patrick’s Day Wallpaper Five Pack, so browse on over and go for the green! Internet Explorer 9 Released: Here’s What You Need To KnowHTG Explains: How Does Email Work?How To Make a Youtube Video Into an Animated GIF

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• Algorithm for a lucky game [on hold]

  - by Ronnie

  Assume we have the following Keno(lottery type) game: From 80 numbers(from 1 to 80), 20 are being drawn. The players choose 1 or 2 or 3..... or 12 numbers to play(12 categories). If they choose for example 4 then they win if they predict correctly a certain amount of numbers(2,3 or 4) from the 4 they have played and lose if the predict only 1 or 0 numbers. They win X times their money accordingly to some predefined factor depending on how many numbers they predict from each category. The same with the other categories. And e.g 11 out of 11 gives 250000 times your money and 12 out of 12 gives 1000000 your money. So the company would want to avoid winnings so high. Every draw by the company is being made every 5 minutes and in each draw around 120000 (let's say) different predictions(Keno tickets) are being played. Let's assume 12000 are being played in category 10 and 12000 in category 11 and also 12000 in category 12. I'm wondering if there is an algorithm to allow the company that provides the game in the 5 minutes between the drawings, to find a 20 number set, in order to avoid any "12 out of 12" and "11 out of 11" and "11 out of 12" and "10 out of 11" and "10 out of 10" winning ticket. That means is there any algorithm, where in a time of less than 1 minute approximately(in todays hardware), to be able to find a 20 number set so that none of the 12000 12 and 11 and 10 number sets that the players played(in categories 10,11 and 12) contains any winning of "12 out of 12" and "11 out of 11" and "11 out of 12" and "10 out of 11" and "10 out of 10"? Or even better the generalization of the problem: What is the best algorithm(from a perspective of minimal time), to be able to find a Y number set from numbers 1 to Z(e.g Y=20, Z=80) so that none of the X sets of K-numbers that are being played(in category K) contains more than K-m numbers from the Y-set? (Note that for Y=K and m=1 there is a practical algorithm.)

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• "I'm Feeling Lucky"-style behavior in Windows 8.1 search?

  - by vorou

  Is it possible to make Windows 8.1 automatically select the most relevant search result, so that I could just press Enter to execute it? Right now, I have to press down-arrow each time to select it, and then press Enter. I occasionally forget to press the down-arrow, and Windows opens that very useful Search Results window for me. It makes me sad since I'm absolutelly happy with the top search result nearly all the time. P.S.: I'm taking about the Search in Start menu (the menu which opens when I press winkey)

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• Bad at math, feeling limited

  - by Peter Stain

  Currently I'm a java developer, making websites. I'm really bad at math, in high school I got suspened because of it once. I didn't program then and had no interest in math. I started programming after high school and started feeling that my poor math skills are limiting me. I feel like the programming's not that hard for me. Though web development in general is not that hard, i guess. I've been doing Spring and Hibernate a lot. What i'm trying to ask is : if I understand and can manage these technologies and programming overall, would it mean that I have some higher than average prerequisite for math and details? Would there be any point or would it be easy for me to take some courses in high school math and get a BSc in math maybe? This web development is really starting to feel like not my cup of tea anymore, i would like to do something more interesting. I'm 25 now and feel like stuck. Any help appreciated.

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• Got that Friday feeling?

  - by Rebecca Amos

  Saturday is just around the corner, and we’re all starting to wrap up for the weekend. If you’re the DBA that ‘Friday feeling’ might be as much about checking and preparing your SQL Servers for the next two days, as about looking forward to spending time with friends and family. Whether you’re double-checking your disaster recovery strategy, or know that it’s your turn to be on-call this weekend, it’s likely you’re preparing for the worst, just in case. The fact that you’re making these checks, and caring about both your servers and your users, means that you might be an exceptional DBA. You’re already putting in that extra effort to make other people’s lives easier. So why not take some time for your professional development and enter the Exceptional DBA Awards? If you’re looking for some inspiration for your entry, download our Judges’ Top Tips poster for advice on what the judges are looking for from this year’s entrants. Not only will you be boosting your professional development, but you could win full conference registration for the 2011 PASS Summit in Seattle (where the awards ceremony will take place), four nights' hotel accommodation, and a copy of Red Gate’s SQL DBA Bundle. So take some time out for yourself this weekend and get started on your entry: www.exceptionaldba.com

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• Does Your Customer Engagement Create an Ah Feeling?

  - by Richard Lefebvre

  An (Oracle CX Blog) article by Christina McKeon Companies that successfully engage customers all have one thing in common. They make it seem easy for the customer to get what they need. No one would argue that brands don’t want to leave customers with this “ah” feeling. Since 94% of customers who have a low-effort service experience will buy from that company again, it makes financial sense for brands.1 Some brands are thinking differently about how they engage their customers to create ah feelings. How do they do it? Toyota is a great example of using smart assistance technology to understand customer intent and answer questions before customers hit the submit button online. What is unique in this situation is that Toyota captures intent while customers are filling out email forms. Toyota analyzes the data in the form and suggests responses before the customer sends the email. The customer gets the right answer, and the email never makes it to your contact center — which makes you and the customer happy. Most brands are fully aware of chat as a service channel, but some brands take chat to a whole new level. Beauty.com, part of the drugstore.com and Walgreens family of brands, uses live chat to replicate the personal experience that one would find at high-end department store cosmetic counters. Trained beauty advisors, all with esthetician or beauty counter experience, engage in live chat sessions with online shoppers to share immediate advice on the best products for their personal needs. Agents can watch customer activity online and determine the right time to reach out and offer help, just as help would be offered in a brick-and-mortar store. And, agents can co-browse along with the customer helping customers with online check-out. These personal chat discussions also give Beauty.com the opportunity to present products, advertise promotions, and resolve customer issues when they arise. Beauty.com converts approximately 25% of chat sessions into product orders. Photobox, the European market leader in online photo services, wanted to deliver personal and responsive service to its 24 million members. It ensures customer inquiries on personalized photo products are routed based on agent knowledge so customers get what they need from the company experts. By using a queuing system to ensure that the agent with the most appropriate knowledge handles the query, agent productivity increased while response times to 1,500 customer queries per day decreased. A real-time dashboard prevents agents from being overloaded with queries. This approach has produced financial results with a 15% increase in sales to existing customers and a 45% increase in orders from newly referred customers.

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• Developer career feeling like going back in time every new job [closed]

  - by komediant

  Is there a good category for this question? My background is bachelor in ICT and for a hobby I am programming already since I was around twelve I think. Started with QBasic, Pascal, C, Java et cetera. Currently I am working for about eight/nine years. Half academics/medical and half company world. A few years ago I started with frameworks and I began with Grails (underlying Spring/Hibernate), which was a heavenly job, very productive and no hassle. My previous job I developed in pure Spring/Hibernate Java, which was a bit more writing annotations and XML and no conventions like Grails. But still, I did like Spring/Hibernate a lot and the professional setup with a developmentstreet, versioning, Jenkins/Sonar, log4j and a good IDE like IntellIJ. It felt quite 'clear' and organised, although I knew Grails which felt a bit more productive. But...at my current job almost half the code is pure servlet, hard coded JDBC (connections handled by yourself), scriptlets in all JSP pages, no service layer, no versioning, no Maven, HTML in DAO-layer, JAR-hell, no hot swap deployment locally, every change you have to deploy and hope it works fine on the server. All local development needs ugly scriptlet tags to check which environment it is running. Et cetera. Now and then developers work over in the evening - I don't - and still lots of issues are not solved and new projects are waiting. I hear the developers complaining, but somehow they feel like what they have now is "advanced" or they are in a sort of comfore zone. The lead developer seems open for new things, but half of the times he says he can implement MVC-framework features himself instead of using what is already out there. So in short, I currently feel like I miss all the modern framework techniques and that the company is going so slow forward. I just work here for two months now. What I do now is also code some partially ugly stuff, but it goes in completely into my nature and I feel uncomfortable with it. Coding something takes long(er) than estimated and my manager complains about why it takes so long and I feel ashamed for myself needing so much time. Where I was used to just writing a query I now build up whole try catch methods. My manager knows my complaints and the developers do so too. There will come a meeting to line out plans for 2013 on technology and the issues I and the company are facing. I am not looking for another job yet, it's close to wehre I live and the economy is fragile. Does anyone else have had this kind of career, like feeling going backwards witch technology? And how did you cope with it?

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• Oracle Fusion Applications User Experience Design Patterns: Feeling the Love after Launch

  - by mvaughan

  By Misha Vaughan, Oracle Applications User ExperienceIn the first video by the Oracle Applications User Experience team on the Oracle Partner Network, Vice President Jeremy Ashley said that Oracle is looking to expand the ecosystem of support for Oracle’s applications customers as they begin to assess their investment and adoption of Oracle Fusion Applications. Oracle has made a massive investment to maintain the benefits of the Fusion Applications User Experience. This summer, the Applications User Experience team released the Oracle Fusion Applications user experience design patterns.Design patterns help create consistent experiences across devices.The launch has been very well received:Angelo Santagata, Senior Principal Technologist and Fusion Middleware evangelist for Oracle,  wrote this to the system integrator community: “The web site is the result of many years of Oracle R&D into user interface design for Fusion Applications and features a really cool web app which allows you to visualise the UI components in action.”  Grant Ronald, Director of Product Management, Application Development Framework (ADF) said: “It’s a science I don't understand, but now I don't have to ... Now you can learn from the UX experience of Fusion Applications.”Frank Nimphius, Senior Principal Product Manager, Oracle (ADF) wrote about the launch of the design patterns for the ADF Code Corner, and Jürgen Kress, Senior Manager EMEA Alliances & Channels for Fusion MiddleWare and Service Oriented Architecture, (SOA), shared the news with his Partner Community. Oracle Twitter followers also helped spread the message about the design patterns launch: ?@bex – Brian Huff, founder and Chief Software Architect for Bezzotech, and Oracle ACE Director:“Nifty! The Oracle Fusion UX team just released new ADF design patterns.”@maiko_rocha, Maiko Rocha, Oracle Consulting Solutions Architect and Oracle FMW engineer: “Haven't seen any other vendor offer such comprehensive UX Design Patterns catalog for free!”@zirous_chad, Chad Thompson, Senior Solutions Architect for Zirous, Inc. and ADF Developer:Wow - @ultan and company did a great job with the Fusion UX PatternsWhat is a user experience design pattern?A user experience design pattern is a re-usable, usability tested functional blueprint for a particular user experience.  Some examples are guided processes, shopping carts, and search and search results.  Ultan O’Broin discusses the top design patterns every developer should know.The patterns that were just released are based on thousands of hours of end-user field studies, state-of-the-art user interface assessments, and usability testing.  To be clear, these are functional design patterns, not technical design patterns that developers may be used to working with.  Because we know there is a gap, we are putting together some training that will help close that gap.Who should care?This is an offering targeted primarily at Application Development Framework (ADF) developers. If you are faced with the following questions regarding Fusion Applications, you will want to know and learn more:•    How do I build something that looks like Fusion Applications?•    How do I build a next-generation application?•    How do I extend a Fusion Application and maintain the user experience?•    I don’t want to re-invent the wheel on the user interface, so where do I start?•    I need to build something that will eventually co-exist with Fusion Applications. How do I do that?These questions are relevant to partners with an ADF competency, individual practitioners, or small consultancies with an ADF specialization, and customers who are trying to shift their IT staff over to supporting Fusion Applications.Where you can find out more?OnlineOur Fusion User Experience design patterns maven is Ultan O’Broin. The Oracle Partner Network is helping our team bring this first e-seminar to you in order to go into a more detail on what this means and how to take advantage of it:? Webinar: Build a Better User Experience with Oracle: Oracle Fusion Applications Functional Design PatternsSept 20, 2012 , 10:30am-11:30am PacificDial-In:  1. 877-664-9137 / Passcode 102546?International:  706-634-9619  http://www.intercall.com/national/oracleuniversity/gdnam.htmlAccess the Live Event Or Via Webconference Access http://ouweb.webex.com  ?and enter this session number: 598036234At a Usergroup eventThe Fusion User Experience Advocates (FXA) are also going to be getting some deep-dive training on this content and can share it with local user groups.At OpenWorld Ultan O’Broin               Chris MuirIf you will be at OpenWorld this year, our own Ultan O’Broin will be visiting the ADF demopod to say hello, thanks to Shay Shmeltzer, Senior Group Manager for ADF outbound communication and at the OTN lounge: Monday 10-10:45, Tuesday 2:15-2:45, Wednesday 2:15-3:30 ?  Oracle JDeveloper and Oracle ADF,  Moscone South, Right - S-207? “ADF Meet and Greett”, OTN Lounge, Wednesday 4:30 And I cannot talk about OpenWorld and ADF without mentioning Chris Muir’s ADF EMG event: the Year After the Year Of the ADF Developer – Sunday, Sept 30 of OpenWorld. Chris has played host to Ultan and the Applications user experience message for his online community and is now a seasoned UX expert.Expect to see additional announcements about expanded and training on similar topics in the future.

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• Feeling Old? Before Middleware, Gamification, and MacBook Airs

  - by ultan o'broin

  Think we're done with green screens in the enterprise apps world? Fusion User Experience Advocate Debra Lilley (@debralilley) drew my attention to this super retro iPad terminal emulator app being used by a colleague to connect to JDE. Yes, before Middleware, this is how you did it. Surely the ultimate in hipster retro coexistence? Mind you, I've had to explain to lots of people I showed this to just what Telnet and IBM AS/400 are (or were). MochaSoft TN5250 Terminal Emulator iPad App This OG way of connecting to apps is a timely reminder not to forget all those legacy apps out there and the UX aspect to adoption and change. If a solution already works well and there's an emotional attachment to it, then the path to upgrade needs to be very clear and have valuable and demonstrable ROI for users and decision makers, a path that spans emotion and business benefits. On a pure usability front, that old school charm of the character-based green glow look 'n' feel could be easily done as a skin, personalizing an application for the user so that they feel comfortable with it. Fun too particularly in the mobile and BYOD space! In fact, there is a thriving retro apps market out there as illustrated by this spiffy lunar lander app (hat tip: John Cartan), part of a whole set of Atari's greatest hits available for iOS. Lunar Lander App And of course, there's the iOS version of Pong. Check out this retro Apple Mac SE/30 too. I actually remember using one of these. I have an Apple Mac Plus somewhere in my parents' house. I tried it out recently, and it actually booted, although all it was good for was playing the onboard games. Looking at all these olde worlde things makes me feel very old, but kinda warm inside too. The latter is a key part of today's applications user experience too.

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• Great job offer..but I have uneasy feeling [closed]

  - by New Hire

  I just got an offer for a great opportunity, location, salary...but something seams odd. During my interview, for the position of software engineer, it was very relaxed and casual. Which was very nice. But I got the odd sense that I already had the job and that this was just a "getting to know you" conversation. Then, when they never did any code testing or assignment to demonstrate my skills I thought that really odd. It's like I got hired straight from my resume. I'm uncomfortable with this because I'd rather know now, that I don't meet their needs, rather than after 3 months. (Which is when benefits kick in and they say they'll convert me from temp. employee) This sounds like temp-to-hire or contract-to-hire.

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• A feeling that I'm not that good developer

  - by Karim

  Hi, Im having a strange feeling, but let me first introduce myself as a software developer. I started to program when I was still a kid, I had about 10 or 11 years. I really enjoy my work and never get bored from it. It's amazing how somebody could be paid for what he really likes to do and would be doing it anyway even for free. WHen I first started to program, I was feeling proud of what I was doing, each application I built was for me a success and after 2-3 year I had a feeling that I'm a coding guru. It was a nice feeling ;-) But the more I was in the field, the more types of software I started to develop I was starting to have a feeling that I'm completely wrong in that I'm guru. I felt that I'm not even a mediocre developer. Each new field I start to work on is giving me this feeling. Like when I once developed a device driver for a client, I saw how much I need to learn about device drivers. When I developed a video filter for an application, I saw how much do I still need to learn about DirectShow, Color Spaces, and all the theory behind that. The worst thing was when I started to learn algorithms. It was several years ago. I knew then the basic structures and algorithms like the sorting, some types of trees, some hashtables, strings etc.. and when I really wanted to learn a group of structures I learned about 5-6 new types and saw that in fact even this small group has several hundred subtypes of structures. It's depressing how little time people have in their lives to learn all this stuff. I'm now a software developer with about 10 years of experience and I still feel that I'm not a proficient developer when I think about things that others do in the industry. Is this normal what I'm experiencing or is it a sign of a destructive excessive ambition? Thanks in advance for any comments.

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• Internet Explorer 9 auto "feeling lucky" for gmail bing search

  - by Gareth Jones

  When Im at school and using school computers, i have to use has IE9. When I want to access my gmail, I type in "gmail" in the URL bar, and thus IE9 does a bing search. The page half loads (As in, loads just about every thing but the search results) and then opens my gmail, kinda like google's "i'm feeling lucky". My question is this: Why? IE9 doesn't have the URL of gmail, as i can watch the bing search load, and then the url changes to gmail, and it only happens for Gmail, having tired with searching Google and Facebook in the same method. The computer is running Windows 7 with Windows Aero disabled, and limited account privileges. While its a cool thing, I would like to known what causes it to happen. Thanks

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• Ungrounded laptop (Macbook Pro) buzzes in headphones, weird feeling when fingers brush lightly

  - by donut

  I've got a nearly 3-year-old MacBook Pro 15" 2.16GHz (MacBookPro2,2). When I have am not using the extended, grounded adapter for the power supply, just using the simple, two-prong plug I can hear a buzzing when I use very sensitive earbuds. This goes away if I touch a metal part of the laptop. Also, I can feel a weird, fuzzy feeling when I brush the metal parts of the laptop lightly with my fingers/skin. Somewhat similar to feeling of a touching hair or a balloon that's charged with static electricity. But I'm not getting sparks or anything. And if I'm touching a metal part of my laptop solidly (not just brushing it) and then I touch someone else's skin I can feel the same effect and so can my victim. I've noticed similar effects with an ungrounded electric blanket. But with that the buzzing can be easily heard without headphones. Is this a defect, normal, or something else? And what exactly is happening?

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• VB.NET, templates, reflection, inheritance, feeling adrift

  - by brovar

  I've just made myself up a problem and am now wondering how to solve it. To begin with, I'm using some third-party components, including some calendar controls like schedule and timeline. They're used in the project classes more or less like that: Friend Class TimeBasedDataView 'some members End Class Friend Class ScheduleDataView Inherits TimeBasedDataView Public Schedule As Controls.Schedule.Schedule 'and others End Class Friend Class TimeLineDataView Inherits TimeBasedDataView Public TimeLine As Controls.TimeLine.TimeLine 'and others End Class (Hmm, code coloring fail, never mind...) Now, to allow managing the look of data being presented there are some mechanisms including so called Style Managers. A lot of code in them repeats, varying almost only with the control it maintains: Friend Class TimeLineStyleManager Private m_TimeLine As TimeLineDataView Private Sub Whatever() m_TimeLine.TimeLine.SomeProperty = SomeValue End Sub End Class Friend Class ScheduleStyleManager Private m_Schedule As ScheduleDataView Private Sub Whatever() m_Schedule.Schedule.SomeProperty = SomeValue End Sub End Class I was wondering if I could create some base class for those managers, like Friend Class TimeBasedCtrlStyleManagerBase(Of T As TimeBasedDataView) Private m_Control As T 'and others End Class which would unify these two, but I've got lost when it came to maintaining two components that have nothing in common (except their properties' names, etc.). Type reflection maybe? I'll be grateful for any advice ;)

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• How to give you website customers a secure feeling

  - by Saif Bechan

  I was wondering how you can give your website customers the confidence that you are not tinkering with the database values. I am planning on running a website which falls in the realm of an online game. There is some kind of credit system involved that people have to pay for. Now I was wondering how sites like this ensure there customers that there is no foul play in the database itself. As I am the database admin i can pretty much change all the values from within without anyone knowing i did. Hence letting someone win that does not rightfully is the winner. Is it maybe an option to decrypt en encrypt the credits people have so i can't change them. Or is there maybe a company i can hire that checks my company for foul play.

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• feeling insufficient while looking for a programming job ...

  - by user325661

  Hello everybody It's really dream to be programmer for me.So i always wanted to be .I had so small knowledges from commodore basic which i couldn't figure out anything in it .Then i tried to learn Visual basic 6 by myself and result wasn't good as i expected because i even didn't understand classes.Then i left to learning programming and to dream to be programmer. But challenge hadn't finished yet . After all of these i started to learn c# and i did chess engine which i hadn't believe that i can create one.I sometimes feel that i understand many thing about programming like knowing classes ,inheritance,abstract class and methods why exist , interfaces ,extension methods ,static classes ,threads. but i am not expert all in it . i just know that as i need . i don't know still i will learn many thing about these.i have also learned html, css2 , php and database concepts a little sql ,tables relations between primary keys etc but i haven't used them in praticaly . i just did some samples so i feel i am lack of knowledges. As a result still i can't evaluate my skills and can't decide what is my level.I just feel myself one step ahead of junior sometimes :) . Still can't decide that it is time to job seeking. While searching job on web i have never seen a junior advertisement. All looking for a good experiencing one.Nobody care about juniors. When found job advertisement which i feel sufficient myself a little then i start to feel that i think i can't do what they want from me and loosing job after have it in short time would leave many crap feelings into my low self-confidence. Please advise me something ... Also i want to ask some of concentrate questions. 1) If i enter a job which i can't provide their expectations should be in employers responsibility to test me while apply the job ? 2) If i answer "yes , i can " questions which is abstract(for example: can u do something like this) would be my responsibility ? Because such abstract questions is not clear and can't know before start it what i really can or not . 3) i have no professional experiences in this job so i even don't know how teams working on projects but a friend of me said that programmers only write method bodies while seniors create all project.So it looks what i can do really easy but i feel that small companies doesn't work like this so it is better work in a big company for starting who has seniors? 4)last applied job was looking for c# . net developer but then i learn that they need .net web developer.Does it take long time to learn specific sides of web programming while knowing c# desktop programming ? Thanks for all answers since now.

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• DBCC CHECKDB (BatmanDb, REPAIR_ALLOW_DATA_LOSS) – Are you Feeling Lucky?

  - by David Totzke

  I’m currently working for a client on a PowerBuilder to WPF migration.  It’s one of those “I could tell you, but I’d have to kill you” kind of clients and the quick-lime pits are currently occupied by the EMC tech…but I’ve said too much already. At approximately 3 or 4 pm that day users of the Batman[1] application here in Gotham[1] started to experience problems accessing the application.  Batman[2] is a document management system here that also integrates with the ERP system.  Very little goes on here that doesn’t involve Batman in some way.  The errors being received seemed to point to network issues (TCP protocol error, connection forcibly closed by the remote host etc…) but the real issue was much more insidious. Connecting to the database via SSMS and performing selects on certain tables underlying the application areas that were having problems started to reveal the issue.  You couldn’t do a SELECT * FROM MyTable without it bombing and giving the same error noted above.  A run of DBCC CHECKDB revealed 14 tables with corruption.  One of the tables with issues was the Document table.  Pretty central to a “document management” system.  Information was obtained from IT that a single drive in the SAN went bad in the night.  A new drive was in place and was working fine.  The partition that held the Batman database is configured for RAID Level 5 so a single drive failure shouldn’t have caused any trouble and yet, the database is corrupted.  They do hourly incremental backups here so the first thing done was to try a restore.  A restore of the most recent backup failed so they worked backwards until they hit a good point.  This successful restore was for a backup at 3AM – a full day behind.  This time also roughly corresponds with the time the SAN started to report the drive failure.  The plot thickens… I got my hands on the output from DBCC CHECKDB and noticed a pattern.  What’s sad is that nobody that should have noticed the pattern in the DBCC output did notice.  There was a rush to do things to try and recover the data before anybody really understood what was wrong with it in the first place.  Cooler heads must prevail in these circumstances and some investigation should be done and a plan of action laid out or you could end up making things worse[3].  DBCC CHECKDB also told us that: repair_allow_data_loss is the minimum repair level for the errors found by DBCC CHECKDB Yikes.  That means that the database is so messed up that you’re definitely going to lose some stuff when you repair it to get it back to a consistent state.  All the more reason to do a little more investigation into the problem.  Rescuing this database is preferable to having to export all of the data possible from this database into a new one.  This is a fifteen year old application with about seven hundred tables.  There are TRIGGERS everywhere not to mention the referential integrity constraints to deal with.  Only fourteen of the tables have an issue.  We have a good backup that is missing the last 24 hours of business which means we could have a “do-over” of yesterday but that’s not a very palatable option either. All of the affected tables had TEXT columns and all of the errors were about LOB data types and orphaned off-row data which basically means TEXT, IMAGE or NTEXT columns.  If we did a SELECT on an affected table and excluded those columns, we got all of the rows.  We exported that data into a separate database.  Things are looking up.  Working on a copy of the production database we then ran DBCC CHECKDB with REPAIR_ALLOW_DATA_LOSS and that “fixed” everything up.   The allow data loss option will delete the bad rows.  This isn’t too horrible as we have all of those rows minus the text fields from out earlier export.  Now I could LEFT JOIN to the exported data to find the missing rows and INSERT them minus the TEXT column data. We had the restored data from the good 3AM backup that we could now JOIN to and, with fingers crossed, recover the missing TEXT column information.  We got lucky in that all of the affected rows were old and in the end we didn’t lose anything.  :O  All of the row counts along the way worked out and it looks like we dodged a major bullet here. We’ve heard back from EMC and it turns out the SAN firmware that they were running here is apparently buggy.  This thing is only a couple of months old.  Grrr…. They dispatched a technician that night to come and update it .  That explains why RAID didn’t save us. All-in-all this could have been a lot worse.  Given the root cause here, they basically won the lottery in not losing anything. Here are a few links to some helpful posts on the SQL Server Engine blog.  I love the title of the first one: Which part of 'REPAIR_ALLOW_DATA_LOSS' isn't clear? CHECKDB (Part 8): Can repair fix everything? (in fact, read the whole series) Ta da! Emergency mode repair (we didn’t have to resort to this one thank goodness)   Dave Just because I can…   [1] Names have been changed to protect the guilty. [2] I'm Batman. [3] And if I'm the coolest head in the room, you've got even bigger problems...

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• Feeling a bit... under-challenged in my university course

  - by Corey

  I'm currently a sophomore at my university, majoring in Computer Science. Obviously, there are some programming courses as part of my curriculum. However, I'm feeling very underwhelmed by its progress. I've self-taught myself a lot and like to code in my spare time as a hobby. I'm currently in Computer Science II. I never took CS 1 because it seemed rather basic -- I asked someone in the department if they would override my CS 1 requirement if I passed their final (which I did with flying colors). Anyway, the class is going by quite slowly. It seems like the rest of the class has a hard time understanding some basic concepts, which the professor needs to keep going over to help them understand. Is this normal? Looking at the class schedule, I seem to know everything except for one or two things near the very end of the semester. Is there a different perspective I can look at this through so it doesn't seem so boring?

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• What did he or she do to enchant you? What was the feeling like? [closed]

  - by Pierre 303

  Guy Kawasaki, the famous author of The Art Of The Start is writing a new book about Enchantment (will be called Art Of Enchantment). He is asking stories about your employees, your things or even websites you visit. What about your colleagues? I need examples of a programmer (you), getting enchanted by another colleague, programmer, analyst, tester (must be within your team). UPDATE: The book is out! http://www.amazon.com/Enchantment-Changing-Hearts-Minds-Actions/dp/1591843790/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&qid=1298106612&sr=8-2

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• I have a feeling that adding fields marked with @Transient annotation to entity is very bug-prone. A

  - by Roman

  I have some philosophical feeling that adding to an entity fields which doesn't mapped to the DB is a wrong way of solving problems. But are there any concrete situations where using @Transient fields leads to implicit and hard fixing problems? For example, is it possible that adding/removing 2nd level cache will break our app when there are @Transient fields in our entities?

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• What is the general feeling about reflection extensions in std::type_info?

  - by Evan Teran

  I've noticed that reflection is one feature that developers from other languages find very lacking in c++. For certain applications I can really see why! It is so much easier to write things like an IDE's auto-complete if you had reflection. And certainly serialization APIs would be a world easier if we had it. On the other side, one of the main tenets of c++ is don't pay for what you don't use. Which makes complete sense. That's something I love about c++. But it occurred to me there could be a compromise. Why don't compilers add extensions to the std::type_info structure? There would be no runtime overhead. The binary could end up being larger, but this could be a simple compiler switch to enable/disable and to be honest, if you are really concerned about the space savings, you'll likely disable exceptions and RTTI anyway. Some people cite issues with templates, but the compiler happily generates std::type_info structures for template types already. I can imagine a g++ switch like -fenable-typeinfo-reflection which could become very popular (and mainstream libs like boost/Qt/etc could easily have a check to generate code which uses it if there, in which case the end user would benefit with no more cost than flipping a switch). I don't find this unreasonable since large portable libraries like this already depend on compiler extensions. So why isn't this more common? I imagine that I'm missing something, what are the technical issues with this?

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• How to add a podcast to web application [closed]

  - by Lucky Luck

  Hi, My client wants to implement podcast on his website. I mean to create a webpage which offers podcasts and subscribe. I don't have any idea about this technique. If anyone knows about this, please share your ideas. Many Thanks Lucky Luck

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• How do I fix these LibreOffice unmet dependencies?

  - by Lucky

  The following packages have unmet dependencies: libreoffice: Depends: libreoffice-core (= 1:3.4.4-0ubuntu1) but 1:3.4.3-3ubuntu2 is to be installed Depends: libreoffice-base but it is not going to be installed Depends: libreoffice-report-builder-bin but it is not going to be installed Depends: ttf-dejavu but it is not going to be installed Depends: ttf-sil-gentium-basic but it is not going to be installed Depends: libreoffice-filter-mobiledev but it is not going to be installed Depends: libreoffice-java-common (>= 1:3.4.4~) but it is not going to be installed libreoffice-base-core : Depends: libreoffice-core (= 1:3.4.4-0ubuntu1) but 1:3.4.3-3ubuntu2 is to be installed libreoffice-calc : Depends: libreoffice-core (= 1:3.4.4-0ubuntu1) but 1:3.4.3-3ubuntu2 is to be installed libreoffice-draw : Depends: libreoffice-core (= 1:3.4.4-0ubuntu1) but 1:3.4.3-3ubuntu2 is to be installed libreoffice-gnome : Depends: libreoffice-core (= 1:3.4.4-0ubuntu1) but 1:3.4.3-3ubuntu2 is to be installed libreoffice-gtk : Depends: libreoffice-core (= 1:3.4.4-0ubuntu1) but 1:3.4.3-3ubuntu2 is to be installed libreoffice-impress : Depends: libreoffice-core (= 1:3.4.4-0ubuntu1) but 1:3.4.3-3ubuntu2 is to be installed libreoffice-math : Depends: libreoffice-core (= 1:3.4.4-0ubuntu1) but 1:3.4.3-3ubuntu2 is to be installed libreoffice-writer : Depends: libreoffice-core (= 1:3.4.4-0ubuntu1) but 1:3.4.3-3ubuntu2 is to be installed python-uno : Depends: libreoffice-core (= 1:3.4.4-0ubuntu1) but 1:3.4.3-3ubuntu2 is to be installed E: Unmet dependencies. Try 'apt-get -f install' with no packages (or specify a solution).

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• Well-tested libraries for player ratings?

  - by Lucky

  It's common in games to implement some sort of numerical ranking system -- the ELO system is usually used in chess. I could implement this system naively using Wikipedia's descriptions, but I suspect that this would open up a whole box of problems that have already been solved: rating inflation, etc -- for instance, the ELO system has a K constant that's 'fudged' according to rating, duration, pairings, statistics, ... What are some libraries (I'm looking at Python, but anything is okay) that implements rating systems? It also doesn't have to be ELO.

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